Cousin-hunting in Scandinavia

by Mary Wilhelmine Williams

Lund University was founded about two hundred and fifty years ago; but the present building, in handsome classical-Renaissance style, is quite new. Inside, also, everything is spick and span, cosy, and generally harmonious. The ceiling of the entrance hall is supported by fine marble pillars, the walls are pleasingly tinted, and here and there in the class rooms are paintings by Scandinavian artists. The student body consists of about a thousand men and women. As in the other Scandinavian universities, the women as well as the men wear a black and white cap, with a button of the national colors in front. The common emblem worn by the students may be taken as symbolizing the equality of opportunity enjoyed at the universities by the women and men alike. The women of Lund University, unlike the women in many co-educational institutions in other parts of Europe, are not merely tolerated; they belong; they have equal rights there with their brothers; they attend classes, receive degrees, and come and go with a quiet air of independence and dignity which carries with it no apology for existence.

The cathedral of Lund is a grand old romanesque pile—the finest of the sort in Scandinavia—dating from the twelfth century. The old gray stone walls and the great square twin towers give it an appearance both venerable and majestic, which attracted me very much. A crowd of tourists had gathered to view the building; and presently a wide-awake looking woman, shirt-waisted and straw-sailor-hatted, came and showed us through it. On the restored brick and plaster walls are many tablets—some more than three centuries old—erected to the memory of past and gone Scandinavians. The pulpit dates from 1592, and is of black marble and alabaster, beautifully worked—but suggestive of death and mourning. Surrounding the pulpit are arranged the coats-of-arms of the nobles who gave it to the cathedral. The choir stalls, or monk stools, as our guide called them, are more ancient than the pulpit. They are very quaint, with grotesque, grinning faces carved on the arms. Above the backs of the stools are scenes from the Bible: in one Jehovah is represented as a very round-faced young man in the act of creating the earth; in another, he is bringing the sun into being; in a third, he is creating the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. Surely the mediæval wood-workers did not pursue their labors with very deep seriousness or reverence; they must have given their sense of humor play while they wrought the funny clumsy figures.

But the cathedral is especially famous for its crypt. This is more than one hundred and twenty feet long and is about one-fourth as wide. Twenty three heavy pillars support the round arches, which in turn bear up the ceiling. This great space is dimly lighted by ten small windows. In the right arm of the crypt is an old well with a circular stone curbing, upon which, long centuries ago, some humorist cut quaint, satirical figures and inscriptions. Down in the crypt, long before the Reformation, Roman Catholic monks said their prayers and kept their fasts. Their cells are still in the walls. Down there, too, under the floor, are buried many ecclesiastical worthies, including the bishops of Lund who once held under their dominion all of the churches of Sweden. Also, and finally, the giant Finn and his family are prisoners in the ancient room beneath the cathedral—in bas-relief on the everlasting stone. And I must confess that I was more interested in the frivolous story of the ill-fated Finn than in all of the holy monks and domineering bishops.

Our cicerone told us the story, about in this wise: In the year 1080 the good Saint Lawrence set the giant Finn to work to construct the cathedral. Since it was to be a mighty building, a giant’s labor was needed to construct it. St. Lawrence, however, lacked foresight, and failed to have a contract signed before the work began. Consequently, the giant had him at his mercy when the task was completed. Finn demanded an exorbitant price for his services—the sun and the moon, or the eyes of the impractical saint. The only chance of escape which St. Lawrence had was to guess the name of the builder; failing to do that, out would go his eyes, for, obviously, the sun and the moon were beyond his reach. But giants, as you know, are stupid, and the Finn family was no exception. When the price was almost within their grasp, Mrs. Finn, while crooning her baby to sleep, from force of habit mentioned her husband’s name in the song.—Presumably the lullaby was the ancestor of the “Father-will-come-to-thee-soon” one.—That minute the game was up; all was lost. For St. Lawrence, who was snooping around, overheard the builder’s name.

In the despair and rage consequent upon their failure, the Finns tried to pull down the church, evidently—like Samson at Gaza—welcoming suicide in the general destruction. However, St. Lawrence, who now had the upper hand, prevented, and disposed of them for good by turning them into stone. There they are even unto this day, a part of the pillars supporting the great vault of the crypt. But, in my opinion, a dastardly crime is also recorded against St. Lawrence by the carvings on the two pillars; for the innocent was made to suffer with the guilty; the little Finn baby was petrified with its parents. There is the poor, helpless infant on the column with his mother, flattened out in pitiless bas-relief, to the eternal disgrace of the Church. Here endeth the story of the bas-reliefs on the pillars of the crypt. He that hath credulity to believe let him believe.

Helsingborg was my second stop in the land of the Swede. You will find Helsingborg on the map where southwestern Sweden almost touches Denmark. Indeed, here the Sound is only a little more than two miles wide, so it is not at all difficult to understand why in centuries past Swede and Dane fought so many and such bloody battles over the control of the commerce which passed through this important gateway. The town has only about thirty thousand inhabitants, but it offered me a number of objects of interest. On the quay was a tablet commemorating the landing of the Frenchman, Marshal Bernadotte, on October 22, 1810, when he came to Sweden as heir of the childless Charles XIII, and founder of the present royal Swedish house. Farther on was a statue of Count Stenbock, the warrior who saved southern Sweden from recapture by the Danes during the Swedish reverses suffered under Charles XII.

But of all the attractions offered by Helsingborg the palm should go either to Swedish hard bread or to Kärnan—preferably, I suppose, to the latter; for Sweden has only one Kärnan while hard bread may be obtained anywhere within her borders. It happened, however, that I had somehow missed my chance at hard bread in Lund, so I shall always associate the gustatory pleasure obtained from it with this particular Swedish town. As its name implies, the bread is hard; it is also dry and brittle and brown, for it is made of rye meal and is baked in thin, round cakes about as large as a dinner plate. On the tables in the open-air café where I had luncheon were great piles of this delectable morsel. This bread, spread with slightly-salted Swedish butter and partaken of with coffee such as the Scandinavians know how to make, supplies a luncheon fit for the gods of Scandinavia. Nectar and ambrosia, I am persuaded, would take only second prize in any international exposition. Frankly, however, Cynthia, I fear that you would vote for the fare of the Greek gods, in preference.

Since the café in which I first partook of Swedish hard bread was very near to Kärnan, where I went immediately afterward, I also associate the bread with Kärnan. This latter is not edible, though from association and sound it may seem so. Yet Kärnan is a “kernel”—the kernel or core of a Swedish fortress built something like six hundred years ago. Its actual date of foundation is lost in the past. Around it were once heavy battlemented walls and towers, all of which played a part in the bloody struggles of the centuries. But to modern times there descended only the great square central building, dismantled and falling into ruins—until recently restored. The restoration has transformed the fragment of the ancient fortress into a handsome red brick observation tower, the newest of the new, from the top of which floats the flag of Sweden. The approach up the hill to Kärnan is a right royal one, and is very fitly named for the good King Oscar. After ascending a series of broad, shallow staircases and passing under three arches, each more majestic than the preceding, I reached the door of the tower. Then there were nearly one hundred and fifty steps of a spiral staircase to climb before reaching the platform under the sky blue flag with its golden cross. But the view from there was well worth a much harder climb. Do not miss it if ever the Wanderlust should carry you to the land of the Swede.

Helsingborg, itself, as I learned as a result of my climb, is a very pretty town with bright, clean buildings, magnificently situated upon the shores of the Sound through which many ships were passing. Below me, up and down the clean, well-paved streets moved the busy Swedes, intent upon their daily tasks. But as it was a clear day I also secured a fine sweep of the surrounding Swedish landscape, and—most interesting of all—had a clear view of the nearest corner of Denmark, Helsingör, as the Danes call it, but the Elsinore of Hamlet to all English-speaking peoples. Helsingör looked less than a good stone’s throw away. Its largest buildings were plainly visible; and Kronborg Castle, which guards the Sound in behalf of the Danes, loomed up in the foreground, grand and majestic. I shall be certain to see it nearer on my return to Denmark.

After a day and a night in Helsingborg I left by rail for Gothenburg—or Göteborg, as known to the Swedes. The landscape through which I journeyed is more rolling than that around Lund; and it is exceedingly stony. In one little valley which we crossed the stones were piled up into walls, evidently not so much for the purpose of forming fences as to clear the soil. Indeed, as it was, these fences covered a large portion of the ground. It was harvest time in Sweden; and kerchiefed women were working with the men in the fields, binding and piling the sheaves. The farm houses here were quite different from those in Denmark, both as regards material and style of architecture. The gaard arrangement was exceptional; instead, the buildings, which are generally of wood, painted dark red, with white trimmings, were unconnected, and frequently arranged parallel to each other.